I RECENTLY took a look at the family of the Japanese champion juvenile filly elect for 2025, so it is only right that I also review a candidate among the colts. This is Lovcen (World Premiere), and he won the 10-furlong Group 1 Hopeful Stakes on just his second outing.
Bred by Northern Farm, Lovcen showed an incredible turn of foot in the final furlong to win. Recent winners of the Hopeful Stakes include the Group 1 Dubai World Cup winner Victoire Pisa, Group 1 Japan Cup hero Epiphaneia, and three Japanese Derby winners, Rey De Oro, Contrail and this year’s winner Crois Du Nord. Contrail went on to land the Japanese Triple Crown.
Particularly significant is the fact that Lovcen is from the first crop of his sire who went to stud in Japan at a fee of only 500,000 Yen, about €2,750. World Premiere (Deep Impact) won the Group 1 Japanese St Leger at three and, two years later, triumphed in the Group 1 Arima Kinen. Not among the fashionable stallions in Japan, World Premiere has had small books of mares, and his first crop contains about 25 offspring. He has sired three winners to date from 10 runners.
Easily the best runner for his dam Songwriting (Giant’s Causeway), Lovcen is among five winners she has produced from her six foals of racing age. Irishman Niall Brennan sold Songwriting as a two-year-old for a sizeable $800,000, the filly having cost $290,000 as a yearling. Katsumi Yoshida took her to Japan but she failed to win, placing on four occasions.
Her attraction to Mr Yoshida was the fact that she was by the great Giant’s Causeway (Storm Cat), and out of the Canadian champion racemare Embur’s Song (Unbridled’s Song). In addition to her big race wins in Canada, Embur’s Song was a Grade 3 winner at Keeneland, and she sold in 2015 to Bridlewood Farm for $900,000. Though she produced a few offspring who sold reasonably well as yearlings, Embur’s Song failed to breed a stakes horse.
The sales of Songwriting and Embur’s Song in 2015 came a year before a close relation of theirs was a star three-year-old in the USA. Embur’s Song’s stakes-placed half-sister Dawn Raid (Vindication) is the dam of Exaggerator (Curlin), and he won the Grade 1 Preakness Stakes and Santa Anita Derby, in addition to the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational. At two Exaggerator was second in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity, and took the same finishing position in the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby.
Arima Kinen
Northern Farm enjoyed a big race double as breeders at the weekend, and a day after Lovcen won the Hopeful Stakes, Museum Mile took the honours in the Group 1 Arima Kinen over an extended mile and a half. The race was worth more than £2.5 million to the winner.
The Arima Kinen is a notoriously difficult race for three-year-olds to win, and Deep Impact, Vodka, Efforia and now Museum Mile are the only winners this century who achieved the feat in their sophomore season. This was victory number five in 10 starts for Museum Mile, who is the first foal out of Museum Hill (Heart’s Cry). The second, a filly named Festival Hill (Saturnalia), won the Group 3 Fantasy Stakes in November and is considered a real classic hope for 2026.
What an achievement that would be, given that Museum Mile is himself already a classic winner. In the spring he beat the undefeated champion juvenile and later Group 1 Japanese Derby winner Croix du Nord in the Group 1 Satsuki Sho (Japanese 2000 Guineas) at Nakayama Racecourse. Museum Mile has also run second in the Group 1 Tenno Sho. He won the 10-furlong classic in a race-record time, and had ended his juvenile season with a runner-up finish in the Group 1 Asahi Hai Futurity,
Museum Mile is from the fifth crop of Leontes (King Kamehameha) who was the best two-year-old of 2015 in Japan after his win in the Group 1 Asahi Hai Futurity, and is a second winner at the highest level for the sire who stands at the Breeders Stallion Station. Leontes is also responsible for T O Royal who won the 2024 Group 1 Tenno Sho (Spring). They are among a dozen stakes winners for Leontes, three others gaining their biggest wins at Group 3 level.
Irish connections
Museum Mile comes from a family with an Irish connection.
His fourth dam Happy Trails (Posse) raced for Bert and Diana Firestone. Placed twice, she was a much more successful broodmare, with 12 winning sons and daughters. Her best runner was the Irish-bred Japanese champion Shinko Lovely (Caerleon), and that mare won 10 of her 15 starts and later bred a couple of stakes winners.
Another daughter of Happy Trails to do well was the dual stakes winner Happy Path (Sunday Silence). She bred a couple of stakes winners, both of which were classic-placed, and her daughter Cecchino (King Kamehameha) was responsible for another recent classic winner in Cervinia (Harbinger), the 2024 winner of the Group 1 Yushun Himba (Japanese Oaks) and Group 1 Shuka Sho, wins that earned her the accolade of champion filly of her generation in Japan.